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Wednesday, August 31, 2016

EU's net neutrality guidelines get published - BBC News: ""There are lots of details still to be determined like how national regulators like Ofcom actually enforce the law using these guidelines," commented Prof Chris Marsden of Sussex University
"The law has been in force for months and they're not exactly stampeding to bring actions.

"Civil society organisations are claiming a great victory but we will see. With over 30 national regulators involved - 28 EU plus several others - much can change or be ignored."" 'via Blog this'

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Europe's net neutrality guidelines seen as a victory for the open web | The Verge: "The guidelines prohibit zero-rating in circumstances "where all applications are blocked or slowed down once the data cap is reached," though they acknowledge that some cases are "less clear-cut." European regulators should assess such practices on a case-by-case basis, BEREC said, taking account for factors such as the market share of an ISP, effects on app choice, and the scale of the practice.

The regulations also allow for traffic management "under limited circumstances;" traffic management practices that block, interfere with, or slow down services and apps would be banned.

The guidelines provide examples of what could be considered as a specialized service, including VoLTE (high-quality voice calls), linear IPTV services, and remote surgeries, which would operate separately from the internet. Such services would have to meet certain quality and capacity requirements to ensure that they can only operate on networks that are not connected to the internet." 'via Blog this'

This would probably include the “ability of end-users to access ISP’s customer service when data cap is reached in order to purchase additional data,” said a BEREC note.

Also, as regards “specialised services” that require sufficient bandwidth and cannot slow down standard services, such as VoLTE, BEREC added a new category: 5G services using network slicing.

It also clarified the guidance that specialised services should not provide connectivity to the internet, saying NRAs should ensure specialised services should be “‘logically separated’ from IAS [internet access services].”

FCC Wants More Time to Respond to Net Neutrality Challenge | Bloomberg BNA: "On Aug. 17, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set a deadline of Sept. 12 for the agency to respond to the petitions. The FCC’s Aug. 23 motion requested a deadline extension to Oct. 3, stating the Sept. 12 deadline fell during a busy period for the agency. Counsel for the broadband providers did not oppose the extension, according to the FCC filing." 'via Blog this'

It is a conscious decision to protect a technology – the internet – that is an invaluable social asset. A political decision that sends a very clear signal to the market: protecting the internet means we need more and better networks that deliver ultra-fast, high quality access to the internet. A political decision that tells the telecoms industries that they don’t get to pick winners and losers online. A political decision that says loud and clear that, when accessing the Internet, the consumer always has the final word." 'via Blog this'

Ninth Circuit Dismisses FTC’s Throttling Suit Against AT&T | Inside Privacy: "In an opinion released [29/8/2016], the Ninth Circuit dismissed the Federal Trade Commission’s (“FTC”) lawsuit against AT&T for violating Section 5 of the FTC Act due to its throttling practices. AT&T’s practice of throttling the speed of customers with unlimited data plans once they reached a certain data usage threshold had been challenged by the FTC as both unfair and deceptive under Section 5. The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s prior ruling denying AT&T’s motion to dismiss on the ground that AT&T was a common carrier and therefore exempt from Section 5 of the FTC Act.

The Ninth Circuit presented the issue as whether the common carrier exemption in Section 5 is status-based, as AT&T argued, or activity-based, as the FTC argued. According to the FTC, companies are only exempt from Section 5 liability to the extent the activity at issue is a “common carrier activity.” The Ninth Circuit disagreed, finding that the statutory language “simply does not comport with an activity-based approach.”" 'via Blog this'

To the contrary, Berec laid down just criteria and referred the competence to decide on specific cases to the national regulators, which in the future will exercise a formidable power in this matter. This scenario is indigestible to big telcos which would prefer to avoid to discuss their commercial practices with national regulators (because in that case they also have to discuss with consumers associations).

Secondly, criteria and conditions laid down by Berec will have an important impact upon the heart of big telcos’ commercial strategy.

Berec indicates that “non-agnostic” zero-rating and network management practices will likely to be forbidden by national regulators. This is a disastrous news for big telcos because discriminating Internet services (in order to favor own or partnered services) is what this telco industry has in mind since all the net neutrality battle and debate started (in 2005 in the EU)." 'via Blog this'

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Wi-Fi dominant data technology for mobiles - Mobile World Live: "The Global State of Mobile Networks study, based on 12.3 billion measurements taken by 822,556 OpenSignal users in an 84 day period, found that smartphone users spent more than 50 per cent of their time connected to Wi-Fi, with Netherlands the most mobile Wi-Fi hungry country, where it accounted for 70 per cent of all smartphone connections.

“You could argue that in many places Wi-Fi has become a far more important mobile data technology than 3G or 4G,” noted the report." 'via Blog this'